An eBay Reality Check

It’s time for an eBay Reality Check! It costs money to sell on eBay. The more successful you are, the more it costs you in listing and final value fees. There is no free ride. However, it is a whole lot cheaper to sell on eBay than it is to open up a bricks and mortar storefront in your hometown.

Consider this: Just to have the pleasure of having a storefront at the local strip mall you will be shelling out thousands of dollars a month in rent and that is before the first customer comes through the front door. Then you have to worry about attracting customers, so you have to shell out hundreds to thousands more dollars a month in advertising. Do you realize how many purple widgets you have to sell a month just to cover this basic overhead? A whole truckload…and more!

Do you think you can operate a stand-alone website for less money a month than what it is costing you in eBay fees? Guess again! Do you have any idea how many e-commerce websites there are in this world that sell your purple widget? Go ahead and Google your particular purple widget and see how many results show up. A little overwhelming, isn’t it?

Now try and figure out how you are going to get your e-commerce site to appear high enough in the search engine rankings to actually be noticed. It takes a bit of skill, some luck, and lots of money going towards Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and purchasing Google AdWords, etc.

There are a number of very vocal eBay Sellers and critics who claim eBay is gouging the eBay Community through their fees. The simple truth of the matter is you are paying eBay to drive traffic to your listings and this traffic is where your sales come from. You are paying eBay a marketing fee, if you will. They bring you customers, pretty much handing them to you on a silver platter. It is then up to you to covert these millions of eBay buyers into your paying customers. You do this by providing a good product, at a good price, in a professional looking listing.

The fees you pay eBay pale in comparison to the aforementioned amounts of money you would be paying to operate and drive traffic to your bricks and mortar storefront. The bottom line is you are going to be paying someone if you want to operate either a real or a virtual storefront. There is no such thing as a free lunch in the retail game.

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